Scherbakov and Yablonsky collaborate on a very good account of the Second Piano Concerto. The opening piano solo has the right chiming-bell quality, and both soloist and conductor phrase the broad initial theme captivatingly, with great care taken to match dynamics to the rise and fall of the melody. On the whole, Scherbakov is an artist with a light touch, which serves him well in this music. He brings plenty of delicacy as well as warmth to the slow movement, and his almost balletic approach keeps the finale afloat at a respectably forward-moving tempo. Despite the fact that the Russian State orchestra is far from first class, sounding at climaxes like an ensemble of strings and trumpets and little else, Yablonsky accompanies sensitively and with affection. It’s a satisfying interpretation at every level.
The Third Concerto doesn’t go so well. There’s a basic lack of energy–not just regarding tempo, but also in terms of phrasing and rhythm–that sucks the life out of the music, particularly in the second and third movements, which simply need more urgency and fire. Despite a first movement that otherwise is idiomatic and intelligent, Scherbakov (in the opening theme of the finale for example) occasionally indulges a tendency to cross the line between delicacy and daintiness, a quality the music really doesn’t need. Yablonsky is just as attentive as in the Second Concerto, but the performance ultimately comes across as conventionally proficient when compared to more daring and imaginative readings by Kocsis, Wild, Rachmaninov, Pletnev, Argerich, or Hough.
It’s also not helped by terrible sonics, at least as a multi-channel production (plain stereo is much better, if not spectacular either). In addition to a certain overall constricted, studio-bound quality, orchestral balances are a mess. Listen to how both the melody and accompaniment in the counterstatement of the Third Concerto’s opening theme seem to get lost in a shapeless fog, or to how the piano and orchestra creep steadily toward the rear speakers as the volume level increases. Such manipulations remind me of those old “electronically reprocessed to simulate stereo” LPs that no one misses today. Even though Hyperion’s SACD of Hough’s complete cycle is hardly ideal from a technical point of view, if you must have this music in multichannel sound, that’s the one to go with.
